Good morning to all of you, I'm a new member of this forum.I live in a beautiful italian city called Bologna. In 2007 I graduated in Philosophy with an historical thesis entitled "Freud and the occult". A few days ago, I graduated in Educational sciences with a sociological thesis called "The italian public debate on Satanism" (one of the funniest things being the reaction of the teachers and of the crowd earing the title of my work during the graduation ceremony).I joined "Letters..." because I'm intersted in Satanism and occultism from different points of view (philosophical, historical, sociological, psychological), but also because I'm intersted in "easier" topics such as horror literature and movies, heavy music, and all those forms of entertainment that share some estetical common ground with Satanism and occultism.I hope to find this place stimulating and I'll be glad to be helpful when possible.Cordially yours, Slowdown.

Well, my thesis isn't available in english. The work was written in italian, as required by university.I still haven't thought about an english translation, as it would take some time to work on it and I'm quite busy with my job. Hopefully someday I'm gonna do it, so I'll let you know.The teachers with whom I discussed the work were not really informed on the topic, but quite open minded: they sadly were more intersted in what I knew about Satanism (this kind of weird thing) than in what I found out about our national public debate.The funny part of my experience was the ceremony moment.Some old teachers were reading the titles of the thesis written by the other students graduating: about an hour of titles about child care and chromotherapy and stuff like that, tears of joy, parents clapping their hands and so on.Then comes my turn: I stand there smiling wearing a shirt of a local satanic group that survived a nation wide media attack in the late '90s. As they spelled the word "Satanism" reading the title, I could feel the disappointed crowd murmuring behind my back.Once again.

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"The difference between the man or woman who's a practicing Satanist, from an identity Satanist is that the practicing Satanist looks at the picture, while the identity Satanist studies the frame." -- Anton Szandor LaVey

"Anyone without a sense of humor is too pretentious to be a good magician." -- Anton Szandor LaVey